Health and social care
Health and social care is a condition whereby medical services are provided by practitioners to improve the quality of life of a given individual who is usually the patient. These practitioners provide the physical and psychological wellbeing of the affected patients by issuing necessary health care, recuperation as well as rehabilitation services to them. Through this, the health practitioners can help the patients as well as the members of their families by offering the necessary support. Thus, it requires the health practitioners to have some professional skills to be able to provide the required assistance to every patient. Some of these skills required include the social skills which enable the health practitioners to work closely and extensively with the patients hence creating a good relationship between the two parties. In addition to that, the health professionals are required to have emotional skills which help them handle challenging patients and those who are undergoing different circumstances such as stress due to bereavement. However, the health and social care field have had many changes with different durations by the use of different techniques and change management tools which occur in various organizations.
Having change management indicates an achievement that is as a result of the adult managers in health and social care. It works by providing some confidence to the managers of the health and social care facilities to be in a position to deal with the various approaches and tools put in place to incur change. These changes mainly occur in the health and social care facilities to transform these areas into new models to merge the hospital’s investment. This change poses some significant effects on the health and social care facilities, which include transparency and cost control efforts. The changes that are incurred by the various management tools and techniques act as the main contributor to the success of the most health and social care facilities. The two main effects that are as a result of the change management help to support the extension of the products and the services every health and social care facility provides to their patients. Most of the changes put in place in most of the health and social care facilities intend to help these organizations get to achieve their goals or the intended promises. This is by reducing the costs and increasing the quality of the products and services they offer to their patients.
The management changes that mainly take place in most of the health and social care facilities are as a result of the various issues that arise in those facilities. In general, some of the problems that face the health and social care facilities include physician alignment, data mobility, and security, risk sharing, data integration and lastly trying to bring into the level, the less skilled clinical personnel and technology in order to achieve the goals set by the health and social care facility. The benefits that result from this change management in combination with improved technology is that it reduces the spending costs and improves the levels of information technology that are a necessity to the success of every facility. Having a deep focus on change management, it aims at making the health and social care facilities get to achieve their desires in a given period within the budget set for the overall change management. Change management may address the shifts in the cultures of a given health and social care facility in the projects set. Thus, change management is usually expected to begin as soon as the development strategies are set and should go on until these strategies are put in place.
In most of the health and social care facilities, making appropriate changes are considered as one of the success. The reason as to why this happens is because it focuses on the desired services that patients want and making little changes with time helps attain this move. Several factors lead to changes in health and social care facilities. One of the significant factors is the high demand for health and social care services. It results from the rise of many new diseases amongst people. To come up with fulfilling services to every health and social care patient, it requires these facilities to make some changes in their operation ways. It is to implement satisfactory services to their patients. This mainly happens when individual facilities do not have the necessary facilities that help in improving the various services provided to the patients in a given organization. Thus, it requires the health and social care facilities to implement some change management because if they fail to, their aim to deliver quality services to most of their patients will fail and won’t be achieved. Every patient prefers to visit an organization that will offer high-quality services to an organization will not high standard services.
In addition to that, another meaningful change that may take place in a health and social care facility is that of technology. Improving technology hastens the working speed of an organization and also helps contribute to issuing high-quality services to the patients. For instance, a health and social care facility may decide to make changes and improve their robotic services to deal with the patients who get admitted due to emergency conditions in a more better and professional manner. As a result of this, it may require an organization to make changes to its employees by getting more professional and more qualified employees who have many skills. It may take different approaches, but some of the approaches taken involve training the existing employees and equipping them with more knowledge and skills to ensure that they offer the best of quality services to every patient. It is being in a position to educate existing staff to provide quality standard services acts as a marketing tool to many facilities, and so many organizations take place in this change management.
The other reason that may automatically lead to change management is the development of any new disease. It is because it requires some employees who have the relevant skills or have the appropriate professionals to deal with the illness on patients. Thus, with such kind of a situation, an organization is expected to make some small variations in their service desks to match professions capable of handling the new disease. In addition to that, this change requires the health and social care facility to come up with tools and techniques that will enable comfortable dealing with the developed illness. It contributes to making the newly developed disease being adequately dealt with all means. As a result of all the above-listed reasons that lead to change management in a health and social care organization, different tools and techniques are put in place for the organization to achieve the change it desires. Since a change in any organization causes an effect on many aspects of the operation, it requires the organization to apply the most ultimate tools and equipment of change management.
One of the change management tools that is used in health and social care organizations is culture mapping. This tool mainly involves looking into details, the culture of a given organization. It rotates around the norms, values, and employee behavior of an organization. This tool helps every person to discover some vital data which might be very important to consider during the change management. For example, ways in which one can minimize the risks during the change management process. In addition to that, this tool helps pick up positive enablers during the change management process. First, it requires the organization to have a list of the different subcultures that carries the total number of its employees. For example, in the health and social care field, the various subcultures involved may include the front office desk, the registered nurses, and the doctors. Change management requires the organization to come up with the appropriate number of people who can adequately represent the various subcultures. After that, an interview between these individuals is carried out to identify the cultural blockers and enablers that have been adopted due to the management. By use of a map, the organization is required to organize the data in terms of the behaviors, blockers, enablers, and the expected results in that particular cultural map.
The other change management tool and technique applied in the health and social care organization is the stakeholder analysis. It is a situation whereby the management gets to identify the stakeholders and categorize them based on different terms, such as the occupation and their legal requirements. In addition to that, the administration may categorize the stakeholders in terms of their geography and their income groups. It enables the management to come up with a good number of people who would take part in the change management and who has the knowledge about how important the process is to them. Stakeholders can be internal or external. Hence, during the change management process, it requires the organization to consider every person that the process will affect. Through this, the organization gets into a better position to give priorities to these people depending on their engagement in the change management. Afterward, the organization receives to categorize every stakeholder most appropriately.
The third tool and technique used in the change management in the health and social care organization is the ADKAR analysis. The main aim of this analysis is to educate the people and the employees that take part in the change management for them to believe in the change required or the difference that intends to get put in place. The word ADKAR represents the initials for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. Most of my colleagues use this kind of analysis for the change management process to fully succeed. It involves a situation whereby the organization leaders try to make attempts to achieve their goals within the scheduled time or within the shortest time possible. Hence, employees must be involved to gain their support in implementing the change management process successfully. The initial step consists of creating awareness. It entails initiating communications with all the employees and getting to share the kind of changes that are to be expected and the reasons as to why the variations will get made. The second part involves inspiring desire into the employees. This step takes the urge to make the employees support the changes intended to take place in an organization, and this helps them to do their part in a voluntary manner rather than in an effective way.
The third step in the ADKRAR analysis is imparting knowledge. It is a step that involves helping all the employees to learn ways of offering the necessary support in change management. It takes place in various ways. Some of these ways include giving tutorials to the employees, initiating coaching programs for the employees, helping employees in their jobs, and lastly starting training programs for the employees. The fourth step includes improving the ability of the employees. It is a situation whereby the strength of the employees to perform is assessed using evaluations and giving feedbacks. The final step in this analysis involves reinforcing the changes desired. It takes place by ensuring that the employees do not resume to the ways they were used to before the variations happened and that they stick to the new ideas put in place. However, it is sometimes somehow difficult to reinforce these changes, but there is always a more natural way of ensuring that the employees maintain the modifications put in place. It is by offering employee incentives. Giving gifts and rewards to employees who fully preserve and abide by the changes enacted, encourages and motivates the whole group of the employees to follow the shifts brought about in an organization. Having rewards for any employee, good deeds boosts the morale of every employee.
From the health and social care organizations, every facility has the things that they may wish to achieve after a given period. Getting to the final point of achieving the goals set boosts the self-esteem of the participants, creates happiness, and also provides a sense of well-being to the relevant shareholders. However, coming up with realistic goals requires an organization to go through some essential steps to achieve. The first and most important step is thinking about what kind of achievement is required. For example, in a health and social care facility, a new disease might develop amongst the patients. The main aim of the organization would be getting to cure the disease. Thus it requires them to do some change management in their organization and probably hire doctors who know how to go about the illness. In addition to that, it requires the organization to put down the goals they aim to achieve. The second step involves being specific on the goals set. It is because they become easily achievable and are more motivating compared to vague goals. Being particular is essential because it issues some precise details in terms of what an organization aims at and what procedures they may follow to achieve the goals.
The third step involves doing some research. It necessarily happens while one is not familiar with a situation. For example, in the health and social care facility, the emergence of a new disease amongst patients could be a bit challenging. Thus, some research would ease the process of change management. Some of the research that would be required is getting to know the various skills to be taught to the employees, how long the training will take and probably how much it is likely to cost. The fourth step to take is determining the procedures required to achieve the goals set. This step requires an organization to split the objective into parts or sub-goals, and this helps in making relevant plans. After having these steps, it then requires one to set the program. For example, to cure a newly developed illness amongst patients, a health and social care facility should make a good plan. The plan also requires some time frame. It specifically focuses on the expected time of achieving the goal set. For example, while teaching employees on the skills of dealing with a new illness in health and social care organizations, the facilities are expected to set the duration in which they desire to achieve that particular goal. Afterward, the date to begin should get observed since the only way to succeed in making a specific goal is by applying the necessary effort and time. Immediately the work starts, progress should be tracked to ensure that the change management process is moving to a positive direction, which is achieving the goals set.
However, while trying to implement changes in any organization, that is the change management, several steps get involved for the success of that particular process. It necessarily happens to have a similar direction with all the employees and helps to curb resistance of the changes intended to take place in any organization. The most crucial step is having support from the management. Employees generate some comfort when they see their managers supporting changes in their workplace. For example, in a health and social care facility, the managers definitely would recommend coaching skills to employees to help in treating a developed illness amongst patients. The employees then accept such kind of changes in a positive way. Secondly, employee involvement is a very crucial step to take while enacting change in any given organization. No matter how small or large the changes are for an organization, all employees should be involved to take part and probably give their suggestions. Thus, the expected change should be communicated to all the employees, and especially those changes that may influence the way employees to perform tasks. It is because many of the employees have the experience and so their participation can bring more benefits when changes get done. The other important step is communicating the change to all relevant stakeholders and employees. Having poor communication may lead to rumors which in return may pose some resistance from different people. Compared to having a proactive disclosure, there can be limited resistance from employees because every information gets tabled for discussion amongst them.
Change implementation is the other very crucial step in change management. Through this step, a timeline gets generated for the benefit of all the employees. It is through this step that the training period gets set. Variation implementation that lacks some good order may lead to frustrations at the end of the change management process. After making the implementations, a follow up is usually a necessity to see how the change is working and also to look at the results of the change and get to determine if they were the expected changes. Following these steps is very important when it comes to making some changes in the way of operations of any given organization. However, having the ability to organize and articulate the opinions and arguments that different people come up with is an essential thing. For example, in the health and social care field, the development of a new disease may lead to the employees being required to take more studies to get equipped with the necessary skills. From this, these employees may have different opinions about the matter. Thus it requires some ability to be able to handle the different views and arguments that are brought about as the subject. One of the critical things needed for this is being knowledgeable about the subject. It knows what exactly the change is and why it is being enacted. It helps people to make contributions in the discussions and thus creating meaning and helping to gather a solution.
Articulating opinions and arguments require one to start small. Being comfortable while airing the views is an important thing compared to over speaking, which may ruin a discussion. Having a pleasant conversation indicates that people have a knowhow of what they are talking about; hence, it is an essential thing during the change management discussions. The other important element of organizing and articulating opinions and arguments is by holding talks with individuals who don’t understand a given subject. For example, in health and social care facilities, coaching to add some skills to the employees is a necessity when new diseases arise. Thus, making discussions with employees who don’t understand different subjects brought about would be a competent move. It is essential as it brings a similar understanding to the employees, and as a result, there is steady progress and approach amongst the employees towards the subject. In addition to that, different organizations have different departments. Not everyone has an understanding of all the departments, and so it is a great move to create some comprehension of every person. The last thing that helps in articulating and organizing opinions and arguments is remaining bold. It is usually the most significant problem with most of the people because they fail to share their thoughts. While holding a discussion, it is imperative to open up and speak out your ideas. It is crucial as it helps gather different opinions and arrive at a solution.
Various criteria are used to evaluate the practice within the health and social care environment. It is typically based on the quality improvement in these facilities. First and foremost, the employees should identify the barriers to improvements and deal with them accordingly. These barriers may be divided into psychological or even physical barriers. They may include the fear of change, loss of natural processes, the fear of failure, or probably the fear of loss of power. The other important thing is that employees should identify and cultivate their facilitators. Facilitators are observed as the factors that may enhance the employee work and may include financial incentives and non-financial incentives. The other important thing is the social interaction, which plays a vital role in change management in health and social care environments or facilities. Thus, having a group of people who have the same opinions may yield high-quality results. Lastly, some internal communication in the background is required. It can be achieved through social media, interpersonal communication, or even have a sitting with the employees to discuss the need for innovation and change and the benefits that accrue from the variation management.
In conclusion, change management occurs severally in the health and social care centers. It is led by different reasons, some of which has been discussed in the document. There are several change management tools and techniques applied in health and social care setting. In addition to that, realistic goals and objectives are required to achieve the changes intended. The ability to organize and articulate opinions and arguments contributes very much to the change management. Several methods are used to evaluate the practices done in health and social care settings. The fact that every organization may require change management to occur, then the same case happens to the health and social care settings. Being able to evaluate the opinions and the suggestions as well as the arguments of different people is so essential as it contributes to the success of any goals set to achieve.